“The impact of labor flexibility on the Argentine telecomunications sector

JUAN SEBASTIAN MONTES CATO

Latin Americam Perspectives

Sage

Lugar: CALIFORNIA, USA; Año: 2004 vol. 31 p. 32 - 44

0094-582X

In 1989 Carlos Menemwas elected president of Argentina. He came from a Peronist background, but after an initial failed experience with heterodox economic policies he implemented a neoliberal model that included reduction of trade barriers, governmental reform, privatization of state enterprises, and a reorientation of productive capacity along market lines. While these measures did put an end to hyperinflation and produce some economic growth, the negative effects were soon evident: an enormous increase in unemployment to almost 20 percent of the active population, 42 percent of the population in poverty by the end of the 1990s, and a skewed distribution of income. In this environment, workers’ organizations and employment itself became precarious. This study examines how these changes affected workers in the telecommunications sector and specifically how the introduction of labor flexibility as a fundamental part of the restructuring of production penetrated the most fundamental aspects of labor relations. After examining the initial context of labor relations and the rise of labor flexibility as a response to the problems arising from the change in the country’s economic model, the article looks at the privatization process in the Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones (ENTel). After a reviewof the negotiations that led to the collective labor agreement in 1975—before the military dictatorship and the economic crises that accompanied the return to civilian rule in the 1980s—the article analyzes the negotiations of the 1990s, which took place in a radically transformed setting. 1